Documenting the issues, challenges and problems that present themselves in setting up and managing a small school library.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Borrowing Statistics

Library Borrowing for Term 1

On the last day of term I took the borrowing statistics for the students for the term. For a comparison of past years maybe I should have looked at those as well, but really I was just looking at a starting point for the students now. Total student loans by month are –

January 145

February 533

March 810

April 138

Total for the term 1626

The loans on the last day for the holiday borrowing were 70 items. That is half the school borrowed a book for the holidays. March is a whole month with 5 days when I was on campus for lessons and borrowing. The loans for each of these the days was 75, 79, 89, 90 and 83 items. The bulk of borrowing occurs from Fiction and Junior Fiction.

I still think that the children could borrow more than what is currently occurring, and with my aid in the library before school every day and availability after school when possible – an increased borrowing level is achievable. The library needs to have more of a focus, so the aim for next term is to increase the student borrowing and access to the library.

In the last staff meeting before the end of term the issue of playground supervision was discussed. There was a problem with the surveillance of some areas of the playground and the safety of the children on some new play equipment. It was looking like everyone would have an extra duty – and really none of us wanted that. I could see it looming that I was going to have an outside yard duty. I felt I would have to play my part in the supervision of the students and it would not be fair to give everyone else an extra duty and I would not have one. There is only so far that the staffing can be spread in a small school and it was decided to place some areas out of bounds in some breaks so the duties were manageable. To do yard duty was not something I wanted, as with the limited time I am on campus I did not want to be outside when I was trying to get children into the library at least for some of the lunch break. So for now the situation was resolved without me being in the playground and I can concentrate on getting the children into the library more next term.

This is a small school of 140 students (170 in 2007) and six (now seven) teaching staff. The school is situated in Australia on the outskirts of a large city. Aside from the teaching staff there is additional support staff who visit the school or work on a part time basis. Support staff includes Learning Support, Music and Physical Eduction and Teacher-librarian. The content of this blog is to identify some of the issues and challenges and to document the processes and some solutions. The purpose is not to be critical, but to outline 'as it is'. Identities have been protected and real names have not been used, although the events and situations are real.